Kirk Douglas called this 1962 classic his favourite film of all time

A decade ago, Kirk Douglas penned a piece reflecting on the very best of his movies over the decades.

The Hollywood star, who died at 103 in 2020, said that his best pictures included Seven Days in May, and his two directed by Stanley Kubrick: Paths of Glory and Spartacus.

But his favourite of all was 1962’s Lonely Are the Brave, which along with the Roman epic was penned by the previously blacklisted communist screenwriter Dalton Trumbo.

Adapted from Edward Abbey’s 1956 novel The Brave Cowboy, the black and white Western movie directed by David Miller saw Douglas play cowboy Jack Burns who gets arrested, breaks out and becomes the subject of a manhunt.

The film, which Michael Douglas believes is his father’s best work, co-stars Walter Matthau as the sheriff who sympathises with Burns but must chase him down.

Reflecting on Lonely Are the Brave in Huffington Post, Douglas shared: “As I have said, this is my favourite movie. I love the theme that if you try to be an individual, society will crush you. I play a modern-day cowboy still living by the code of the Old West. Dalton wrote a perfect screenplay -- one draft, no revisions. My character gets into a bar fight with a vicious one-armed man. He was actually Burt Lancaster's stand-in, who had lost his arm in the war. It was a tough shoot in and around Albuquerque -- high altitude, snow, fog and freezing rain in May!” It also turns out that he feuded with the director.

Douglas added: “I didn't get along with the director very well; plus, he had no regard for safety. When we were shooting on a narrow ledge with a steep drop, he asked me to walk around my horse on the outside. I wanted to be on the inside against the wall, because the horse instinctively would protect itself. Even after I explained, he argued with me, but I had seen too many unnecessary accidents to agree. The best relationship I had on this film was with my horse, Whisky. Of course, the horse couldn't talk back.”